[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 24492-24494]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                TORTURE MUST NOT BE CONDONED BY THE U.S.

  (Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, this morning the top story on the front 
page of the Washington Post describes in detail how the CIA has been 
hiding and interrogating al Qaeda and other prisoners in covert prisons 
around the globe. No one knows what the rules of the game are for the 
interrogations that take place there. There is no accountability, no 
genuine oversight. In fact, information about these facilities and 
their practices has been deliberately withheld from the Congress and 
the American people. In effect, the prisoners in these jails simply 
disappear.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not what America stands for, this is more like 
Chile under Pinochet or Argentina under the junta.
  We know now why Vice President Cheney is so determined that the final 
defense appropriations conference report include exceptions to Senator 
McCain's provision against torture and the Markey provision prohibiting 
rendition. If those provisions are watered down or struck down by the 
defense conferees, then mark my words, Mr. Speaker, America will lose a 
piece of its soul. Let us reclaim the values and the principles that 
have made this country great.
  Mr. Speaker, the text of the article in today's Washington Post is as 
follows:

                [From the Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2005]

              CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

                            (By Dana Priest)

       The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most 
     important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in 
     Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials 
     familiar with the arrangement.
       The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set 
     up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has 
     included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, 
     Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as 
     well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, 
     according to current and former intelligence officials and 
     diplomats from three continents.
       The hidden global internment network is a central element 
     in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on 
     the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on 
     keeping even basic information about the system secret from 
     the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of 
     Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
       The existence and locations of the facilities--referred to 
     as ``black sites'' in classified White House, CIA, Justice 
     Department and congressional documents--are known to only a 
     handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only 
     to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each 
     host country.
       The CIA and the White House, citing national security 
     concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded 
     Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in 
     open testimony about the conditions under which captives are 
     held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the 
     facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with 
     them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be 
     detained or for how long.
       While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public 
     reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules 
     after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at 
     Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the 
     existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials 
     familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to 
     legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and 
     increase the risk of political condemnation at home and 
     abroad.
       But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in 
     Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military--which operates 
     under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress--
     have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments 
     and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those 
     concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and 
     CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA 
     employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators 
     that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner 
     in U.S. custody.
       Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its 
     system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, 
     arguing that the successful defense of the country requires 
     that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate 
     suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without 
     restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the 
     military tribunals established for prisoners held at 
     Guantanamo Bay.
       The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the 
     Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at 
     the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the 
     disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those 
     countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of 
     possible terrorist retaliation.
       The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic 
     and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, 
     when the working assumption was that a second strike was 
     imminent.
       Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated 
     within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the 
     legality, morality and practicality of holding even 
     unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps 
     for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA 
     officers began arguing two years ago that the system was 
     unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique 
     espionage mission.
       ``We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a 
     grand strategy,'' said one former senior intelligence officer 
     who is familiar with the program but not the location of the 
     prisons. ``Everything was very reactive. That's how you get 
     to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a 
     netherworld and don't say, `What are we going to do with them 
     afterwards?' ''
       It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such 
     isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is 
     why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former 
     and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government 
     officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that 
     the CIA's internment practices also would be considered 
     illegal under the laws of several host countries, where 
     detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense 
     against allegations of wrongdoing.
       Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against 
     Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or 
     Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators 
     in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved 
     ``Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,'' some of which are 
     prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. 
     They include tactics such as ``waterboarding,'' in which a 
     prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.
       Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to 
     foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their 
     release that they were tortured, although it is unclear 
     whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. 
     Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such 
     accusations have heightened concerns among foreign 
     governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and 
     interrogation practices.
       The contours of the CIA's detention program have emerged in 
     bits and pieces over the past two years. Parliaments in 
     Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened 
     inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured 
     their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the 
     agency's prisons.
       More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the 
     CIA into the covert system, according to current and former 
     U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, 
     a rough estimate based on information from sources who said 
     their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not 
     include prisoners picked up in Iraq.
       The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the 
     sources said.
       About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have 
     been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites 
     financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, 
     including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to 
     current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. 
     government officials. Two locations in this category--in 
     Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at 
     Guantanamo Bay--were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

[[Page 24493]]

       A second tier--which these sources believe includes more 
     than 70 detainees--is a group considered less important, with 
     less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited 
     intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were 
     originally taken to black sites, are delivered to 
     intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan 
     and other countries, a process sometimes known as 
     ``rendition.'' While the first-tier black sites are run by 
     CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by 
     the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, 
     sometimes, direction.
       Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not 
     torture detainees, although years of State Department human 
     rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.
       The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation 
     from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground 
     cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one 
     outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or 
     to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former 
     and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.
       Most of the facilities were built and are maintained with 
     congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has 
     refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and 
     Senate intelligence committees' chairmen and vice chairmen on 
     the program's generalities.
       The Eastern European countries that the CIA has persuaded 
     to hide al Qaeda captives are democracies that have embraced 
     the rule of law and individual rights after decades of Soviet 
     domination. Each has been trying to cleanse its intelligence 
     services of operatives who have worked on behalf of others--
     mainly Russia and organized crime.


                       Origins of the Black Sites

       The idea of holding terrorists outside the U.S. legal 
     system was not under consideration before Sept. 11, 2001, not 
     even for Osama bin Laden, according to former government 
     officials. The plan was to bring bin Laden and his top 
     associates into the U.S. justice system for trial or to send 
     them to foreign countries where they would be tried.
       ``The issue of detaining and interrogating people was 
     never, ever discussed,'' said a former senior intelligence 
     officer who worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, or 
     CTC, during that period. ``It was against the culture and 
     they believed information was best gleaned by other means.''
       On the day of the attacks, the CIA already had a list of 
     what it called High-Value Targets from the al Qaeda 
     structure, and as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack 
     plots were unraveled, more names were added to the list. The 
     question of what to do with these people surfaced quickly.
       The CTC's chief of operations argued for creating hit teams 
     of case officers and CIA paramilitaries that would covertly 
     infiltrate countries in the Middle East, Africa and even 
     Europe to assassinate people on the list, one by one.
       But many CIA officers believed that the al Qaeda leaders 
     would be worth keeping alive to interrogate about their 
     network and other plots. Some officers worried that the CIA 
     would not be very adept at assassination.
       ``We'd probably shoot ourselves,'' another former senior 
     CIA official said.
       The agency set up prisons under its covert action 
     authority. Under U.S. law, only the president can authorize a 
     covert action, by signing a document called a presidential 
     finding. Findings must not break U.S. law and are reviewed 
     and approved by CIA, Justice Department and White House legal 
     advisers.
       Six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush signed 
     a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to 
     disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, 
     capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world.
       It could not be determined whether Bush approved a separate 
     finding for the black-sites program, but the consensus among 
     current and former intelligence and other government 
     officials interviewed for this article is that he did not 
     have to.
       Rather, they believe that the CIA general counsel's office 
     acted within the parameters of the Sept. 17 finding. The 
     black-site program was approved by a small circle of White 
     House and Justice Department lawyers and officials, according 
     to several former and current U.S. government and 
     intelligence officials.


                         Deals With 2 Countries

       Among the first steps was to figure out where the CIA could 
     secretly hold the captives. One early idea was to keep them 
     on ships in international waters, but that was discarded for 
     security and logistics reasons.
       CIA officers also searched for a setting like Alcatraz 
     Island. They considered the virtually unvisited islands in 
     Lake Kariba in Zambia, which were edged with craggy cliffs 
     and covered in woods. But poor sanitary conditions could 
     easily lead to fatal diseases, they decided, and besides, 
     they wondered, could the Zambians be trusted with such a 
     secret?
       Still without a long-term solution, the CIA began sending 
     suspects it captured in the first month or so after Sept. 11 
     to its longtime partners, the intelligence services of Egypt 
     and Jordan.
       A month later, the CIA found itself with hundreds of 
     prisoners who were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan. A 
     short-term solution was improvised. The agency shoved its 
     highest-value prisoners into metal shipping containers set up 
     on a corner of the Bagram Air Base, which was surrounded with 
     a triple perimeter of concertina-wire fencing. Most prisoners 
     were left in the hands of the Northern Alliance, U.S.-
     supported opposition forces who were fighting the Taliban.
       ``I remember asking: What are we going to do with these 
     people?'' said a senior CIA officer. ``I kept saying, where's 
     the help? We've got to bring in some help. We can't be 
     jailers--our job is to find Osama.''
       Then came grisly reports, in the winter of 2001, that 
     prisoners kept by allied Afghan generals in cargo containers 
     had died of asphyxiation. The CIA asked Congress for, and was 
     quickly granted, tens of millions of dollars to establish a 
     larger, long-term system in Afghanistan, parts of which would 
     be used for CIA prisoners.
       The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the 
     Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first 
     housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 
     2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered 
     guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain 
     him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight 
     without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. 
     government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in 
     the death.
       The Salt Pit was protected by surveillance cameras and 
     tough Afghan guards, but the road leading to it was not safe 
     to travel and the jail was eventually moved inside Bagram Air 
     Base. It has since been relocated off the base.
       By mid-2002, the CIA had worked out secret black-site deals 
     with two countries, including Thailand and one Eastern 
     European nation, current and former officials said. An 
     estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex 
     of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation.
       Then the CIA captured its first big detainee, in March 28, 
     2002. Pakistani forces took Abu Zubaida, al Qaeda's 
     operations chief, into custody and the CIA whisked him to the 
     new black site in Thailand, which included underground 
     interrogation cells, said several former and current 
     intelligence officials. Six months later, Sept. 11 planner 
     Ramzi Binalshibh was also captured in Pakistan and flown to 
     Thailand.
       But after published reports revealed the existence of the 
     site in June 2003, Thai officials insisted the CIA shut it 
     down, and the two terrorists were moved elsewhere, according 
     to former government officials involved in the matter. Work 
     between the two countries on counterterrorism has been 
     lukewarm ever since.
       In late 2002 or early 2003, the CIA brokered deals with 
     other countries to establish black-site prisons. One of these 
     sites--which sources said they believed to be the CIA's 
     biggest facility now--became particularly important when the 
     agency realized it would have a growing number of prisoners 
     and a shrinking number of prisons.
       Thailand was closed, and sometime in 2004 the CIA decided 
     it had to give up its small site at Guantanamo Bay. The CIA 
     had planned to convert that into a state-of-the-art facility, 
     operated independently of the military. The CIA pulled out 
     when U.S. courts began to exercise greater control over the 
     military detainees, and agency officials feared judges would 
     soon extend the same type of supervision over their 
     detainees.
       In hindsight, say some former and current intelligence 
     officials, the CIA's problems were exacerbated by another 
     decision made within the Counterterrorist Center at Langley.
       The CIA program's original scope was to hide and 
     interrogate the two dozen or so al Qaeda leaders believed to 
     be directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, or who 
     posed an imminent threat, or had knowledge of the larger al 
     Qaeda network. But as the volume of leads pouring into the 
     CTC from abroad increased, and the capacity of its 
     paramilitary group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began 
     apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links 
     to terrorism were less certain, according to four current and 
     former officials.
       The original standard for consigning suspects to the 
     invisible universe was lowered or ignored, they said. 
     ``They've got many, many more who don't reach any 
     threshold,'' one intelligence official said.
       Several former and current intelligence officials, as well 
     as several other U.S. government officials with knowledge of 
     the program, express frustration that the White House and the 
     leaders of the intelligence community have not made it a 
     priority to decide whether the secret internment program 
     should continue in its current form, or be replaced by some 
     other approach.
       Meanwhile, the debate over the wisdom of the program 
     continues among CIA officers, some of whom also argue that 
     the secrecy surrounding the program is not sustainable.
       ``It's just a horrible burden,'' said the intelligence 
     official.

[[Page 24494]]



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